Conversation

IF LIFE teaches us anything, it’s that at its core, life is a competition. A competition to survive and reproduce. And in the animal kingdom, that exists as the competition to secure mates.

And like it or not, humans are part of the competition.

It’s easy to forget that, when you cast aside politics, science, medicine, literature, art, sociology and philosophy, at our core, we are still animals. Our insecurities, relationships, dreams, fears, and ambitions might all be enormously complex, but our behavior, the very patterns of our existence, when looked at from outside, are incredibly simple, and incredibly indistinct from the lives of almost all other animals.

We seek food. We seek shelter. We seek a mate.

That is what we do, just as every other animal does. And in fact, so essential are these needs, that until they’re all met, it’s hard to think about anything else. Just imagine when you were last extremely hungry or being battered by the weather? What else did you think of other than a hot meal or roof over your head? Didn’t all those “human concerns” just seem to fade away? And, well, I doubt you’d have much interest in a site largely dedicated to dating and self-improvement if your sex life wasn’t a concern.

Before we’re humans, we’re just animals.

And like any other animals, we’re in direct competition with one another to mate and reproduce. And the fear that that is born from this competition, from this demand of our animal psyche, is one that affects our lives in fundamental ways that manipulate and control almost every decision we make.

THE THREE FEARS

If you’re living in the western world, then the fear and immediate threat of death is not really an issue. Supermarkets, housing and over the counter medicines have all but eliminated the issue of death from our existence. Nothing’s hunting us, nothing’s stealing our food and nothing’s destroying our homes. We simply sit at home, and in one way or another, try to solve the problem of how we are going to mate with another person.

I say mate because even though the vast majority of people (guys included) think of this as love and companionship, from an animal perspective, it’s still just finding a mate.

And when it comes it finding a mate, humans do this like any other animal. By using a dominance hierarchy. The more dominant an individual is, whether that be for beauty, achievement, or anything else, the more likely that individual is to mate. Now, I’m not saying for a second that this is the be all and end all of human mating – It is, thanks largely to women*, far more complex than this – but the reality of this dominance hierarchy is something that for the most part exists, and is something that our brain is definitely, definitely aware of.

With our survival taken care of, all we’re left with is the competition to secure a mate. And it is that competition that instills in us three very basic fears:

Fear of yourself

Fear of the same sex

Fear of the opposite sex

We fear ourselves because we fear we might not be able to compete. We fear the same sex because we fear they might outcompete us. And we fear the opposite sex because they might reject us.

No matter if you’re a guy or a girl, at some point you’ve sat there and thought – “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not as attractive as her”. “I’m not as strong as him” or my personal favorite “she wouldn’t like me anyway”.

These are fears that we are exposed to day in and day out. But rather than identify these as animal fears, we typically label them as:

But this is missing the full picture. We fear failure because it means we’ll be lower down the hierarchy of mates. We fear inadequacy because it means we can’t and won’t ever be able to compete. We fear confrontation because it means we might end up being proven to be lower down the hierarchy than a potential rival. We fear rejection because, well, it means we’re shit out of luck with that mating prospect.

It is for this reason that we don’t attempt our dreams and procrastinate. It is for this reason that our self-esteem sucks. It is for this reason that we don’t assert our boundaries. It is for this reason that we don’t approach the girl we like.

It’s all connected.

Our fears are far less complex than we realize. They’re all orbiting around one central fear. A question that we’re asking ourselves every day:

“Can I compete?”

BEATING THE COMPETITION

If life is a competition, then we have two options. Compete and reap the rewards, or run away and suffer the consequences. I.e shame and self-loathing.

But the way in which we compete is a little more unique than the animals would have it. Far from chest beating and charging each other till our hooves fall off – engaging in the competition is less about defeating opponents than it is about facing your fears in order to free yourself.

Fear of failure, confrontation and rejection are all dealt with the same way; by consistent, gradual exposure. These are fears that are chipped away at over years, slowly and surely removing us from a prison of fear into a free variety of behavior. We learn to be comfortable with confrontation by slowly asserting our boundaries more often, and doing physical sports like boxing. We learn to be more comfortable with rejection by slowly approaching more and more, and letting ourselves say whatever we want, regardless of the potential outcome.

Fear of inadequacy is dealt with by proving your beliefs wrong. By challenging what you think about yourself and seeing if it actually lines up with reality. The more you expose yourself to the various successes that you are capable of, the more you are building your sense of self-worth on tangible, hard-won achievement. Instead of deciding your result before you try; try and keep trying and see what the result is. Eventually, you’ll win, and over time, you’ll win a lot.

But this is just about overcoming the fears that stem from the inherent conception of life. What about the competition itself? When I say compete, do I literally mean compete with other people?

Well, no, not really. In many ways, that’s an extremely toxic way to live. Not only does almost everyone start becoming a threat, but your entire worldview becomes centered around how others perceive you; specifically how members of the opposite sex perceive you. Your entire focus in life is about maintaining and increasing where they perceive you on your own perceived dominance ladder.

As you can imagine, that’s both wildly insecure and a complete fucking headache.

It also doesn’t really make sense, as there are numerous metrics upon which a person is judged. What are you gonna do, compete on all of them? Good luck with that.

It’s a stupid way to live, and it misses the true power that exists in accepting that life is a competition. If life is a competition, then its inherent demand is that you compete to the best of your ability, that is, that you consistently keep improving yourself. Rather than get lost in a constant race with others, you simply look at yourself and examine where you can do better. You ask yourself “where can I improve?” And then you start doing it. Rather than asking yourself whether you can compete, you assume you can, and ask yourself how you can compete better.

Because once you combine this question with the fears that you are slowly chipping away, competition with anyone else is something you’ll never have to worry about ever again.

*By this I mean, women care far more about how you make them feel than how dominant you are. Realising this is the difference between being a macho dick measurer, and someone who has Game.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

PATRICE O’NEAL was an exceptionally gifted comedian. Referring to his standup as performances, he wouldprefer to improvise what he knew he wanted to talk about, adjusting it based on his own mood and the mood of the audience. As a result, his structure was haphazard and unpredictable, but the authenticity of it built a relationship between himself and the audience; a relationship where they were often at his mercy.

Jerry Seinfeld once said he never looks at the audience, instead preferring to focus on the noises, the rhythm, and sticking to the material he had in this head. Patrice was the opposite; during his standup, he didn’t just look at the audience, he involved them, he held them hostage to the uncomfortable conversations he wanted to have.

It would be easy to look at Patrice and say that his talent lay in his ability to improvise where other comedians would need planned routines; that he was just that funny. But this would miss what gave Patrice his real talent:

His unflinching honesty when it came to what he believed was the truth.

No matter who he was speaking to; man, woman, black, white – he said what he thought, and he said it unashamedly; often calling people out on their hypocrisies and exposing people to parts of themselves they weren’t aware of.

I remember when, in one of his radio appearances, a female writer called in to promote her book on how to train men to be better husbands – a book she based around applying the same techniques used in animal training. Barely seconds on the air, Patrice launched into her, saying:

“Urrrgh – that’s hilarious. Again, automatically I’m gonna tell you what the flaw is in your thinking: you don’t want to be the – the controller. That’s the thing. Women don’t want to win, you want a winner. You don’t want to rule the nest – that’s why you’ve never met a happy woman boss. You don’t wanna be there. You’re angry about being a boss. You want a boss. You want your man to be the leader. This is why it’s already flawed on a prehistoric level. Why – you don’t wanna run your husband. Do you know why running your husband is not sexy? Cause you don’t wanna be there doing it. That’s why it never works for a woman to run things – cause you don’t wanna – you look at your husband like URRRGHH – look at this bum letting me run his life. Phooey. You have a – you just have a loser for man.”

She left the call a few minutes later.

Now, I’m not here to debate the merits of Patrice’s argument (if you really want to know, I agree with him*), I’m just here to explore what it was he was doing. Which, in essence, was staying true to himself no matter what. No matter how uncomfortable, how confrontational, how alienating it was; Patrice stayed true to himself.

Whatever the subject matter. If he had a view, he said it.

In my article on Charisma, I wrote that being okay with potentially being perceived as unlikeable, and actually leaning towards that, was a hallmark of charisma. Instead of trying to please anyone, just shamelessly being yourself and expressing who you are with a take it or leave it attitude was essential.

Nowhere is this truer than in dating.

WHY MEN LIE TO WOMEN

If you’re a woman and you’re reading this, I think I need to reinforce to you the fact that men rarely tell the truth. We want to do it. But we don’t.

Instead, what we do is filter.

A common trait in people struggling with social anxiety is that they will be very conscious of what they say. They will be extremely picky about when they enter a conversation, how they enter a conversation, and acutely sensitive to how what they say will be received. Now, I don’t just mean received after they’ve said it, no, I mean how it will be received before it’s even been said.

They’re like the bad Politician version of themselves. What they say is essentially the pre-packaged, planned, and politically correct version of whatever they actually think – if you’re lucky that is. Usually, it’s just what you want to hear, regardless of what they think.

The reason for this is simple. They want you to like them.

Now you’re probably wondering “yeah that’s great, but what the hell does that have to do with men and women?”

Well with men, they almost always talk to women like they have social anxiety.

In fact, a man who talks freely around women is so rare, it may as well be a myth.

And the logic behind this makes perfect sense. When someone with social anxiety is altering their conversation, it’s to get someone to like them so they aren’t a threat and won’t socially hurt them. When a guy talking to a woman is altering his speech its also because he wants her to like him.

Can you guess why?

What is it that he could possibly want?

Whether you like it or not, a fundamental part of the male-female dynamic is that men want what women have, but women are the gatekeepers for what men want.

Part of the male psyche is always dedicated to winning what we want. Like one of those birds who builds a nest and does a dance, or a silverback who drums his chest the loudest, on some level, our actions are guided by the desire to charm or impress the gatekeeper into giving us what we want.

The problem with this, however, is that it sucks.

When you allow what you want from a woman to dictate all of your behavior, you’re allowing yourself to be driven by your neediness, your shallow baser needs, or your manipulative nature; but worse than this, you’re trading your self-respect for sex. Or in the case of relationships, love too.

Yes. Sex has become more important to you than who you are.

And on any level, relationship or single, placing sex (or love) as more important to you than who you are isn’t just a lack of self-respect, it’s an act of stupidity.*

THE MODERN PLAYER IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

The more you lie to a woman in order to get what you want, the more you aren’t just disrespecting yourself, but through that disrespect, you are making yourself far less likely to get what you want.

And the reason for this is blindingly simple.

You’re unattractive.

And I don’t mean – big nose, bad teeth, small dick unattractive.

No, I mean your soul is unattractive. Who you are is just ugly.

In my article on the Fundamental Characteristics of the Attractive Man, I stated that the only trait that mattered was that a man developed himself, for himself. Not for her. That he built his life around who he is, what he wants, and who he wants to be. He accomplished his potential, he found his enjoyment and he went after goal, after goal, after goal, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

But this principle of developing yourself for yourself extends even further, in a way that is so essential it baffles me that I didn’t really expand on it. Here’s what I forgot to emphasize:

When you lie to a woman, you are using your own voice, your own words, your own expression of your identity, not for yourself, but for her.

On a fundamental level, this is the most unattractive thing you can do. It doesn’t matter how much you live for yourself, develop for yourself, and have fun for yourself; if your basic expression of your own identity, in words, is not for you, but for her, then you’re toast. You’re kablooey. Like some kid who acts tough only to come across someone truly aggressive; your attractiveness was an illusion that she will very quickly see through.

Your words are the expression of who you are. Before you do anything else with your life, the words you choose to communicate with, the words you choose to say, and the words you choose to stand by are the clearest representation of who you are, and what you firmly believe. Your words are your soul.

And it’s either attractive or unattractive.

It’s either for you or for her.

KILL THE POLITICIAN

Before you do anything else you have to fix how you speak. You have to start aligning your words with what you actually think and feel.

Not what I think, not what the news thinks, not what your friend thinks, not what will avoid confrontation, not what will get you laid and not what will make you friends, get you a promotion or make your parents love you; you have the say what you think and feel.

You have to find the Politician within your soul, put a .44 Magnum to his head, and blow his brains right across your frontal cortex until there’s nothing but your unfiltered voice blasting out like a guitar solo.

Now, this might sound complicated, but it’s the method is actually very simple.

You get in touch with who you are.

You have to take the risk and just say it.

But as step one requires being traumatized, falling in love, breaking up, reading, questioning your values and all the gold of living that you naturally will have experienced to some degree already, I’m just going to say this:

The easiest way to start understanding who you already are and what you think and feel and believe is to start writing all of it down and exploring it. Get to know yourself by confronting yourself, and supplement that with the writing of people who have also done this; Freud, Tolstoy, Rousseau, Eliot, Levi, Frankl, Emerson, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau, Twain, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer, Jung, and pretty much anyone whose writing has stood the test of time.

Because that’s what good writing is; identity – distilled and perfected. The more you do this, the more you will figure out the essentials of who you are. The only tonic that works better is trauma, and that’ll show up when it shows up. Just strap in and enjoy the ride.

Now let’s move on to 2) You have to take the risk and just say it.

I know countless people that practice meditation who are completely out of touch with their identity and words. They have almost nothing to say, and if you ask them any penetrating questions about themselves, they sit there with this airy look about them, eyes glazed over like a caught fish – what do they sit there doing? Have they attempted to think about nothing for so long that they’ve emptied their brain of all their merit as well?

God knows.

The reason I find this ironic is that the single greatest way to murder your Politician is to develop presence. When you develop presence (read: the awareness of what is happening right now and what you are doing right now) you develop the ability to spot your own bullshit, and when you’re faking your own identity – i.e saying stuff to appease your boss, women, make friends – instead of saying what you actually think.

The more you learn to spot when you’re not saying what you think, the more you can start pulling the trigger and start saying what you actually think.

This is best represented by looking at the conventional patterns of behavior, and how they fit into your life and automatic behavioral patterns.

Friendliness, being nice, being agreeable, being a gentleman, being confrontational, expressing displeasure, expressing annoyance, silence, hatred, anger, sadness, laughing at misfortune, taking pity on someone’s misfortune; all of these are examples of typical patterns of your own behavior.

But here’s how it needs to work:

Don’t be friendly unless you want to. Sometimes, you’re gonna feel like annoyed, irritated, you’ll want to be alone. The same goes for being nice. You don’t have to be nice if you don’t feel nice; if someone’s fucked you off, tell them.

Don’t be agreeable unless you genuinely agree or get on with the person. This one is essential. If you don’t enjoy their company, if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, if you think they’re wrong, say it and voice your opinion. Yes this will be confrontational, yes this might mean you’re in the wrong sometimes, but yes this the absolute right thing to do. Back your own opinion.

Don’t be a gentleman unless you want to. Big shock but not every woman deserves to have the door held open for her. Hell, some deserve to have it slammed shut on their way out.

Be confrontational. If your opinion, beliefs, and values come into conflict with someone else’s and you don’t say or do something – why the fuck are you even alive? Why are you the spectator of your own life?

The same goes with displeasure, annoyance, silence, anger, hatred, black humor, empathy – if they are real within you, then you need to start expressing them. Don’t hold them back.

In other words: Never lie. Never pretend.

Because the more you learn to align your voice and actions with your soul, the stronger it becomes.

This is the pumping iron of spiritual strength. And when you’ve backed who you are long enough, and developed an identity, a will, and a soul that is robust and honest – then you’ve developed a strength that nobody can fake, and nobody can take away.

This is taking responsibility for your own inner strength and worth – your own personal power.

And in seizing your personal power, you’ve made the most attractive decision you can ever make.

*I’ve met many individuals who claim they’d be happy with this. But I’ve never met a woman who actually was.

*This is far from something I just see in single guys. No, I see this in guys in relationships even more. Because those guys aren’t just worrying about sex, they’re worrying about love as well. If neither of those needs is in a healthy place within you, then you’re sending the Politician to talk to your partner so much that you start to morph into the Politician.

I can’t think of a single guy I know who isn’t like this with their partner.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

A FEW DAYS AGO, I wrote an article on storytelling and its role in charisma. In it, I broke down the structure of a good story and argued for its role in not just charisma, but in human connection itself. To me, story telling was essential.

But there were some who disagreed.

It was decided by some that rather than being good advice, this was instead detrimental, as it led people to blather on and reel off stories about themselves, without paying attention to anything the other person was saying. And I mean, sure, that is pretty shitty advice – but it’s also something I never recommended. So I put it to the back of mind and moved on.

Or at least, I tried to.

I’ve written a lot about charisma in the past – how it works within basic conversation and flirting, and how it’s essential roots lie, paradoxically, within the willingness to be perceived as unlikeable, rather than the skill of being found charming.

However, despite covering all of these topics, I have never once addressed the importance of listening itself – not just why you should do it, but how the different types of listening occur and how they affect your relationships and happiness itself.

It’s time that changed.

THE FOUR TYPES OF LISTENING

Having worked in sales for most of my twenties, I’m no stranger to the concept of ‘teaching listening’. Stuffed into cramped board rooms and forced to consume hours of material (to be used solely for the purpose of manipulating others), the concept of different but all too commonly utilized forms of listening that appear in our day to day lives is something I’ve noticed for years.

In my own behavior, and in the behavior of others, I’ve often spotted varying and specific types of listening, that radically differ in the way we interact with others and the quality of relationships in our lives.

What I slowly came to realize is that these different types of listening all orbit around one single decision, a simple decision, that, as I will explain, has far flung consequences in our ability to connect with others, and have memorable interactions.

AWAY IN FUCKING LA LA LAND

Tell me if you recognize this:

You are in a conversation with someone, but rather than listening to them, you are in fact listening deeply to whatever idea, thought or daydream that is currently engaging your brain. So intensely are you listening to this neural activity, that you cannot even hear what the person is saying.

In order to keep the actual conversation going in real life (usually for no other reason than basic social decorum), you adopt the appearance and mannerisms of someone who is engaged, listening and interested. You nod, you lean forward, you occasionally perform an emotive facial expression, often followed by a gasped “really?”. Other verbal punctuations include, “Uh huh”, “sure” and a flurry of “Yeah, yeah”.

This is the appearance of listening; the simulation of it. In fact, the name I almost gave this was Simulated Listening.

As you can imagine, this simulation can only last so long before it’s exposed, typically when the other party in the conversation asks your opinion on something and you’re left frozen wondering what the fuck you were just asked.

This is the most frequent form of listening that you get with heavily introverted people, people who have ADHD, people who are exhausted, and also, me.

The chief negative of this problem is that it leaves you trapped within your head in conversation. Instead of consciously directing your focus at the person you’re speaking to (more on that later), you’ve decided to stay within your own head, listening to your own thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in the company of others, it drains you of your personality, your engagement, and prevents you from having real connection with others.

You might not have heard of this but it is an epidemic that has consumed the entire world.

You know when you’re talking to someone, and maybe the TV’s on, their mobile phone is flashing up, someone’s having in argument in the restaurant or they’re also doing some kind of work, and the entire time they’re speaking to you but deep down you know they’re only half tuned into to your conversation, and simply offering what is necessary in order for it to continue whilst they tune it to what it is they actually want to concentrate on. Usually important things like Facebook.

This kind of listening is the one that leaves you most dissatisfied, and instead of having a true exchanged of ideas and feeling, all you’re left with is being managed.

The easiest way to spot this kind of listening in yourself is when you’re wanting to concentrate on something else, but instead of telling the other person this outright, you choose (for the reason of basic decorum) that instead, you’ll focus on both to placate the other person whilst keeping yourself happy.

If you’re an introverted person it’s unlikely you’ll do this, as with your head blasting out its own thoughts you’ll have a hard enough time concentrating on a what anyone else is saying as it is – but if you aren’t, I’d almost guarantee you do this. In our age of smart phones, WhatsApp and Instagram, there is simply too much instant access stimulation to divide our attention – an attention that is crucial to understanding others and emotionally engaging with them (I will get to this later).

And that divided attention might make for short term enjoyment, but in the long run, your relationships will suffer.

Which one do you think is actually worth focusing on?

THE PSYCHOPATH

I always considered it ironic that in sales training we were often instructed to ‘fake empathy’ with people. That is, when they had a genuine concern or grievance, we were tasked with listening to them in order to spot it, pretend to empathize with it, and then connect it to what we were trying to sell them.

Instead of listening to them for mutual enjoyment and mutual connection, we were listening to them in order to get something – in this case, their money.

The insecure guy desperately hangs on every word in order to say something that will make them like him; the guy trying to learn game frantically picks through her conversation to spot a moment to fake connection with her; the ambitious employee feigning interest to the boss in order to win approval, and maybe a promotion.

Just as everyone has what they want, everyone falls into traps of using listening in order to get what they want.

The downfall of this is that whilst it can be beneficial in terms of potentially achieving things you may desire, it almost always comes at the cost of true connection with others. Not only is this something that is felt by the person you are interacting with, but it also comes at the cost of your own real connection.

When we leverage conversation with others in order to get want, we cost ourselves the unique sparks of connection and spontaneity that true, organic conversations have. As we go into an interaction knowing our outcome, in either achieving it or not, we inevitably end up learning very little about the other person, and as a result ourselves, in the process.

This form of predatory listening is the most toxic as it is the easiest to consciously slip into. Where twin track listening and la la land have an element of the unconscious to them; predatory listening is a conscious decision to go forgo your own emotions and empathy in the place of your own desires.

At best, it gives you what you want, whilst leaving you with shallow, empty relationships. At worst, it gives you nothing at all.

Are either something you really want?

REAL LISTENING / DEEP LISTENING

We’ve talked about getting stuck in your own head, we’ve talked about dividing our focus between our conversation and something else, and we’ve talked about the predatory, psychopathic listening – and each of them has something in common.

They each involve focus.

In the truest, most real conversation you will have, you will be more focused on the other person than anything else. Not what you want, not what’s around you, not what’s in your head. The other person. Because it is within this focus, that you can truly listen and hear what the other person is saying, what the other person is feeling and who the other person is, and as a result connect on a deep and meaningful level.

This focus is subdivided as follows:

Listening – through focused attention:

What is being said?

What isn’t being said?

Feeling – through empathy:

What is this person feeling?

What does their tone/body language suggest?

The reason we focus on these is twofold:

We will easily detect if someone is not listening to us, for any of the reasons listed earlier.

If they are genuine, we will very easily connect with who they are and how they feel.*

When we listen to what the person is saying, we hear what it is they are trying are trying to say. When we listen to what they aren’t saying, we hear what it is that they are avoiding saying, or perhaps unaware they are trying to say. When we empathize with what they’re feeling, we begin to understand how they feel right now. When we listen to their tone and pay attention to their body language, we begin to see what feeling they might be hiding.

When we listen to all four, they all link together into a complete picture of the person we’re talking to. When we have a complete picture of who we’re talking to, we can share a picture of ourselves, and through this sharing, this conversation, we slowly uncover different elements of ourselves that we might not have been aware of (both them and us) and the sparks of connection and charisma come to life.

The logic for this is simple. When we feel what someone else feels, they feel safe. When we hear what someone else is saying, they feel heard. When we can see, and empathize with what they aren’t saying, they feel accepted and understood.

And all of this makes them feel better. It makes you feel better.

Isn’t that what charisma’s all about?

HOW TO START LISTENING WELL

One of the backward ways people look at conversation is they spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what they want to say, and what they want to get across, rather than investing focus on the other person in the conversation. And if they aren’t doing that, then they’re usually lost focusing on something else; tuned out, passively taking in the conversation they’re involved in.

This is present in every type of listening except for Real Listening.

When we’re in our own head, our focus is on ourselves. What am I thinking? How do I avoid getting found out? What do I need to say?

When we’re splitting our attention, our focus is on ourselves. How do I keep this person entertained whilst I look at what I want? How do I avoid getting found out?

When we’re trying to get what we want, our focus is on ourselves. How do I use what they’re saying to my advantage? How do I mask my intentions? How does what they’re saying connect to what I want?

When the focus is on ourselves, not only does our listening suffer, but as a result, so too does our charisma, our connection, and ultimately, our happiness.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Just as our ability to listen is destroyed by focusing our attention on ourselves, it is just easily bolstered by focusing it on them.

That’s the magic pill of listening.

Directed focus.

You choose to not listen to your thoughts. You choose to not listen to distractions. You choose to stop focusing on what you want. You look them in the eye. You turn your body towards them. You give them your focus, your attention and you listen.

That’s all there is to it.

There’s no secret, there’s no art, and there’s no reason why you’ve been held back from doing this already. It’s just a choice.

Stay in our own head, or find out whats in someone else’s.

Which one sounds more interesting to you?

*Unless we just don’t like each other.

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If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

IT DOESN’T TAKE A GENIUS to look around and see that, as a species, we’re completely obsessed with stories. Whether it’s the news, television, books or advertising, we consume stories relentlessly. And the reason why is no mystery.

Stories make us feel.

News makes us outraged. Titanic makes us cry. Twilight makes us gouge our eyes out and advertising makes us feel fat. Behind all the details of stories, there’s a feeling.

And if feeling lies at the heart of charm – it’s no coincidence then, that storytelling is one of the easiest ways to skyrocket your charisma.

In What Is Art, Tolstoy argued that art is when a feeling is transferred from the artist to another person. I believe charisma works in largely the same way; emotion is contagious, and when felt strongly, will often rub off on another person.

This is why when you feel anxious and uncomfortable, people tend to feel uncomfortable around you. This is why when you feel genuine warmth for someone they enjoy being around you.

The most charismatic people we meet are the ones who make us a feel a certain way. They’re the ones who capture our emotions and take us from a lower state of feeling to an intense one.

If we’re sad they can make us happier, or they can make us a sadder. If we’re angry they can make us laugh; if we’re bored they can make us excited.

And stories are the easiest way to do it.

Why else do we watch television when we’re lonely, scroll through other peoples lives on social media when we’re bored, why else do we go to the movies when our lives lack excitement?

Stories are everything.

But telling them well is a different matter altogether.

THE RULES

In this article, I’m going to break down the steps you need to tick off in order to tell a story well during a conversation. This is not something that is easy to do, but it is something that, with practice, you will learn to maximise your ability at. Below are the 7 techniques you will need to employ, in the listed order, to master any story you have to tell. For good examples of people doing this in practice, watch any stand up comedian worth his salt. It is essentially their job to do this well, and then some.

Here are the techniques:

Start with the truth

Embellish it

Structure it

Add obstacles

Find your key elements

Learn your delivery

Fail, fail and fail until you’re good

But first, let’s start with the biggest excuse people normally give: I don’t have any good stories.

I DON’T HAVE ANY GOOD STORIES

One of the biggest complaints people have when it comes to telling good stories is that they don’t have any good stories from their life. And if you’re thinking this, then it’s a fairly compelling excuse; an excuse that’s, more often than not, justified with any number of reasons and evidence drawn from your own life.

Maybe you’ve never done anything exciting. Maybe you’ve never experienced much of life. Maybe you’re a complete loser. Maybe you’ve been sat in your parent’s house all your life and have never known what it’s like to leave home.

But hang on, how many people have never left home. How many people know what that’s like? Isn’t that worth sharing? What the hell do you feel every day if you live like that?

I don’t know. I don’t think many people would know. But if you’re in that situation you might.

Now, it might not be as obvious as some of the examples I gave, but as with embellishment, you can take a kernel of truth and expand upon it. Often, you can take two separate, average stories, and blend them into one.

The other day I was on a train heading out of London when I needed to use the toilet. When I got inside, I sat down on the rattling toilet seat and went about my business. The whole place was filthy and cramped and got me thinking about a time I had food poisoning when I was on a bus, traveling. The bus didn’t have a functioning toilet seat, so I had to squat above it. The lock on the door didn’t work so I had to hold that shut as well. It was a nightmare. I remember that the walls were falling apart – all ripped and tattered. That, in turn, reminded me of the time I arrived at my third world hostel dorm only to find an insect nest in the corner of the room.

Eventually, sat there on the train toilet, I began to blend the stories into one. Until it became “I once got food poisoning on third world train. When I got to the toilet there was no seat, no lock on the door, and some kind of insect nest in the corner.”

And from there it basically tells itself.

The idea is that your life contains a variety of stories – some that will work from the outset, some that work better when combined – and all of them, without exception, are unique in emotional content to you. Nobody felt them the way you felt them. And passing that feeling on to others is what brings you together.

START WITH THE TRUTH, THEN EMBELLISH THE SHIT OUT OF IT

A good story starts with a kernel of truth.

Maybe it’s setting off the alarms at the museum, getting food poisoning, or asking a girl on a date. Whatever it is, the element of truth which you, or someone else, has experienced is the basis from which you build a strong story.

In my own life, I once set off the alarms at the Auckland Museum. That seems like a good place to start a story. But this on its own fairly thin, and lacking the necessary elements to heighten engagement.

In the early stages these elements are simple:

Context and embellishment.

Context is the events surrounding or grounding the story. And embellishment is what every story needs. Think of it like an amplifier, you take whatever you have that is true and amplify it. This might sound like lying, but as Mark Twain once said: “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying for a second that you should lie. That’s lame. And considering you’d be doing it to impress people, that’s double lame. All you need to do is take a story that is true and exaggerate some of the elements so that they make for a better story. Think of it as giving the truth a facelift.

Taking that to my own story, I would say:

“I once set off the alarms at the British Museum.”

It just sounds better, bigger and grander. The trick is to keep it believable, but just expand the story so it’s more engaging to the listener. Often, they’ll spot that you’re exaggerating but won’t care because they understand you’re just telling a decent story.

Now that’s a fairly simple example, but consider this:

‘In Bolivia, I was attacked by dogs.’

This is true, I was. There were two of them. However:

‘In Bolivia, I was attacked by a pack of wild dogs.’

Sounds much better.

But telling that story from beginning to end lacks context, so I would usually add:

“Before I went traveling, I had to get a bunch of vaccinations. My doctor recommended all of them, but I only got the essentials. I skipped rabies, as, I’d never gotten bitten by animals in my life so why would that change now? Well, In Bolivia…”

This establishes more of context, also adds stakes to the story (other than, y’know, getting eaten). Context is essentially helping the listener orientate themselves to where the story is and who it is about. The more efficiently you can do this the better.

But if you’re looking to tell a story, you need to make things emotionally engaging. This is done two ways.

Through structure.

Through how you physically tell it.

STRUCTURE

First, we’ll deal with structure.

The basics are simple. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Which roughly translates as:

Beginning (context and set up), middle (conflict), end (resolution).

The beginning is where you want to give your listener a sense of place and character, as well as any elements necessary for the context of the story. You want to introduce what the story character wants, and how that brings them into conflict with people/things.

The middle is where the meat of your story is and will usually be the longest part. This is where you want all the conflict to occur, all the obstacles that your character has to face here, building up to a final, largest obstacle that they’ll have to overcome before the story is resolved. The more your character loses here the better.

The end is where you resolve your story. You resolve the conflict and you explain how your character got/didn’t get what they want. Any other side stories, elements or jokes that have been set up get resolved here.

OBSTACLES

On top of this, you have characters who are attempting to achieve some kind of goal. In order to dramatize this, you put obstacles between them and the goal. This naturally makes the story longer, but also increases the chances it’s emotionally engaging.

For every obstacle you introduce, you want to introduce a way around it that either works or doesn’t work out. The best kind of ways around it are ones that result in a ‘Yes, but’ which is something I use to describe a plan that works but incurs negative results as a consequence.

Consider this example, I will put the obstacles in bold.

“In Bolivia, I was attacked by a pack of wild dogs. I had turned down a wrong alleyway a night and stumbled across a pack of them. Their ears pricked up, and they instantly launched at me. I ran around the corner, straight into a fence, which I tried to climb but my keys fell out, so I dropped down to grab them, and the dogs leaped at me, but I got them, and fell over the other side and ran off down the street.”

Essentially you want it to be:

I wanted X, but then this happened so I did this, but then this happened so I did this, but then this happened so I did this, and then I finally got X / didn’t get X.

That’s the most simple structure you can use. Now note that the example follows the structure. It has context (I meet the dogs) and conflict (I’m trying to escape the dogs), but it still needs resolution.

Now, if I was to continue this story (and please bear in mind I’m trying to write this as I would say it to someone, rather than how I would write it), I would do it something like this:

“I thought I’d lost them, but when I reached my hostel, they were there. Two of them were moving towards me. The biggest dog approached me first, some kind of Pitbull. He cornered me into my door and was growling and barking – but the one behind him was even worse – this feral, yapping thing, leaping up at me.

I had no idea what I was doing but I turned to the bigger dog, looked him in the eyes and kept saying “easy”, “easy” in a calm voice and trying to look non-threatening. In mind, this seemed like the right thing to do. It never occurred to me that the dog probably spoke Spanish. I kept doing it and I don’t know what it was, maybe I reminded him of someone who treated him kindly, but he stopped barking and turned to leave. The little one, the beta dog, followed him. I was shaking, but I pulled myself together and opened the door. As soon as I did they both spun, and leaped at me. I slammed the door shut as they hit it and I fell to the floor hearing them barking and bashing against it, trying to get inside.

Laying there, all I remember thinking was “why the fuck I didn’t I get my rabies vaccination?”

The entire of that resolution, is true, incidentally.

Aside from the two basic obstacles of the dog, I also punctuated the general story with ironic or funny observations (the dog speaking Spanish, and my vaccinations). This isn’t as necessary as introducing an obstacle and an inventive way of overcoming it, but as humor is the most pleasant feeling, if you can get someone to laugh or smile, you’ve done a good job.

Now, this might seem like a lot of effort, but the reason I do this is simple. The embellishment and detail helps to build the emotion that I was experiencing at the time; panic and excitement.

But a story on it’s on isn’t enough. Where an experienced writer could take the above, and layer it with atmosphere, reversals, and drama – in conversation, you don’t have that much time, so you have you have to tell it well.

You have to tell it with feeling.

THE TELLING: KEY ELEMENTS AND DELIVERY

The difference between written story and spoken story is the time that you have to tell it. A book is all about deep immersion. I could go into detail about what the dog looked like, what the street looked like, what my relationship with the Bolivian economy is like and how the moon hung in the sky – but face to face that would take ages. It would bore you to death. You’d feel awkward standing there as I blathered on. Try reading a couple of pages of a book out loud. You’ll immediately notice it takes ages and that not a lot happens.

In person you want to be brief, you want to strip any story you have down to the basics, embellish it where necessary, dramatize it so it has feeling, and then you want to tell it. Because it’s in telling it that it comes to life.

The two rules for telling are expression and pauses.

Expression determines the mood/emotion you are trying to convey, and pauses give the expression emphasis.

Take this example. A few years back, I lived in a house filled with strange people. One was an alcoholic, one had pet rats, another was into S&M and another was wildly promiscuous. I usually tell stories about the last two; short ones, that rely almost entirely on the telling.

“My housemates Ex was banging on the door. She was saying she needed to pick up some of her old things. Sure, whatever. He wasn’t in, but I knew he’d placed her stuff in a box near his door. I left her to it, and she set to rummaging around in to box checking it was all there. When she was done, she picked it up and headed out. As she passed I took a look inside. Sat on the top was a strap on dildo. What the – ?”

“My house mate ran into my room one morning in tears. I asked her what was wrong and she said “I brought a guy back last night and he was really awful to me in the morning”, I felt bad for her and asked her what happened and she said “well, he started being really rude, laughing at me, and he turned to his friends -“ “hang on, what were his friends doing there?”

Neither of those work that well when you just say them, they rely entirely on saying the very last element with a look of complete confusion, bewilderment, and eventual figuring it out. This is for two reasons:

It’s exactly what I felt at the time.

It’s exactly what the listener is feeling.

The stories are about the realization that my housemate used to get pegged by his girlfriend, and that my other housemate had a gang bang. In both situations, I was none the wiser, and this news was dropped on me in a strange fashion. That was the feeling, so that is the feeling I need to convey.

The general principle of expression is to feel it strongly. Almost exaggerate it. Just as you embellish details, exaggerate expression. It just heightens the effect. Then, with pausing, hold it for longer than you think is necessary. Hell, I often look around bewildered, then wander off at the end.

So for the example of the dogs story. I would typically tell it quite fast paced with a general emotion of fear or worry, slowing down at points of emphasis. Fast paced because I was being chased. Fear because I was scared. And slowing down at moments like “It never occurred to me that the dog probably spoke Spanish” because that only really works if I say it like it’s a moronic realization.

The trick is finding the moments that are the key elements that the story hinges on. These moments are the ones where the feeling exists, and it is these moments, that when targeted, will help the person listening feel the same thing. The same principle applies for punchlines of jokes.

FAILURE

For every story I tell that lands, there’s a dozen where the altimeter gives out and I glide in ignorance straight into a mountain face.

Some people won’t like what you’re selling, no matter how sharp it is, and what’s worse, you won’t be good at selling it till you’ve failed to do so a dozen times.

It’s all well and good to have a great story, but until you’ve taken the risk in conversation to tell it, you’ll never learn if it’s actually any good and if you actually have any ability to tell it. As I’ve argued before, charisma of any kind hinges on you potentially being unlikeable.

Stories epitomize this. There are few things that risk a negative response more than telling a story badly. It is a woeful faux pas. But you have to go through it and you have to risk it.

There is no other way.

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

Good stories don’t just entertain, they help people learn who you are, and what you feel.

One of my biggest problems is that I have always been a class clown. The dipshit at school who said stupid things to make people laugh always got sent out of class and was always looking for approval. In many ways, I’m still that guy. I like to entertain people. The only thing that’s changed is I care less about what they think.

The flaw with this is that whilst I make people laugh, I often end up avoiding stories which really open me up (and by extension them) as a person. I make them feel what I want them to feel, rather than feel what I am. In reality, I need to tell better stories like anyone else, not just for charisma’s sake, but to feel closer to the people I’m around. To make me feel less alone.

For you, this will be no different.

You’ll have been through a break up, or you’ll have met someone that inspires you, or failed sometime, or succeeded sometime, you were probably brave once, you were probably a coward once – you’ve lived a life, and because of this, you’ve experienced all the various things that other people have, but in your own unique way.

Learn to share that uniqueness.

Because when we’re trapped within ourselves, and the most we offer socially is entertainment, or even worse, silence, we never actually let people get to know who we are. We never actually escape our own loneliness.

It’s not how I’d want to live.

I remember when I first started dating. Girls would always ask me why I was single, how long my relationships were for and why they failed. Of my biggest relationship, I would always say “it fizzled out”, and move on to some entertaining story or joke. I shared nothing of value about myself.

The truth was that my relationship failed because I was needy, didn’t really have my own life, and I was manipulative and terrified of being alone. My ex-girlfriend contributed in her own way sure, she didn’t really know what she wanted. But my reasons were clear, and my responsibility. I was needy and a bit of a loser. But years later, despite being confident that I was no longer that same person, I never shared that. I always moved on. Scared deep down that those same reasons for being rejected then would be a reason to reject me now.

What happened when I opened up about it was quite the opposite.

They accepted it. And shared some of their own failed relationships and emotional failings. They admired the confidence.

Go figure.

In admitting I wasn’t confident in the past, it turns out I was now.

For years I’d felt like that was a weakness, an ugliness that was unique to me, but in reality, plenty of other people; men and women had been there. Telling that story allowed me to realize I wasn’t alone.

And it allowed them to realize they weren’t either.

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

WHEN ASKED about one of the best pieces of advice he’d ever been given, Tony Robbins offered a gem he’d received from one of his mentors, Jim Rohn:

“If you focus on adding more value than anyone else, you’ll never have to worry about anything.”

It was a year or so ago when I first heard this. I remember being struck at the time by how staggeringly obvious it was. Having worked in sales for the last five years, I was painfully aware of the concept of value. Drilled into my head by tired instructors in big business seminars, the concept of adding value had become an empty buzzword; drained of all life and merit when it became just another mechanism for pursuing a material goal – usually, a sale.

“Find the customers need and connect it to your product.”

Which often meant:

“Pretend to add value.”

The merits of adding value are fairly straight forward. When you solve people’s problems, people are happy to reward you and want to include you in their life. The principle is underpinned by the belief that if you continually add value to people’s lives then they will look for ways to reward you. This is how any self-help seminar guru makes a living. Don’t feel confident? Well, he’s got a fix for that. And I’ll bet you’ll be happy to pay him if it works.

I imagine, to a cynical mind, this might seem like wishful thinking. But consider your own life, don’t you pay to have comedians make you laugh? Don’t you pay to have movies take you to other worlds? Don’t you pay for an internet subscription so you can watch porn and feel like less alone?

Much of your own life is the readiness to offer something in return for the ability to make you feel better.

Therefore, given the obvious benefits of adding value, it would seem clear that I am, like Rohn, advising you to focus on adding value, so that you’ll never have to worry about anything else.

Well, not exactly.

VALUE VAMPIRES

The problem with advising people to add value is that it is immediately seen as a technique – as something you do in order to improve your relationships with people or get something you want. By merely advising people to do this, you advise them to modify their behavior in order to achieve something involving other people. And this is usually in form of acting in an insincere, inauthentic way in order to get what they want.

In other words, by advising people to add value, you advise them to be needy.

It’s the salesman, the politician and the actor’s problem; it’s all about how the other person perceives you. Do they perceive you as helpful? Do they perceive you as a leader? Do they perceive you as entertaining and charismatic? Your entire ability to add value hinges on someone’s perception of you, therefore, all your efforts go into controlling how they perceive you.

I remember when I was staring out at trying to improve my dating life. Pick up books that I read would often speak about adding value, of being the life of the party that brought the fun. This made sense, on paper, but more often than not it just made me hyper self-conscious and aware of how ‘fun’ I was, and neurotic about how girls were responding to me. Instead of adding value, I had become a value vampire, who fed off how well girls responded to me. Like an actor chasing applause, or a politician seeking votes; I was desperately trying to feed off what I wanted, in this case, validation and sex.*

It turned out, that in my effort to add value, I had turned into an empty, faceless individual.

And in almost every case of ‘trying to add value’ that I’ve seen, this has always been the case. There was always nothing behind it. To offer another alliteration, it is vacuous value.

INWARD VALUE

There is an alternative though, but it begins with letting go of your desire to have people react to you the way you wasn’t them to. And once you’ve done this, it’s simple:

You become a man who adds so much value to his own life that he naturally adds value to other people.

When we develop ourselves, for ourselves, and naturally explore the diversification of our own identity – we learn lessons and skills that in our actions and life choices, naturally connect with people and give them something to learn from, or enjoy.

The best person to learn about dating from is a guy who has taught it to himself. The best way to learn how to write is to read great writing. The best way to build a successful business is to model the way’s in which successful entrepreneurs made it happen for themselves. Hell, this even works in sports – Kobe Bryant is a direct result of the value that Michael Jordan added to his life through Michaels own efforts to better himself. Bryant saw that and said, “I want that too.”

When we take full responsibility for our lives and build a true relationship with ourselves; one that understands who we are emotionally, one that confronts our fears, develops our discipline and builds our skills and talents – we become someone who, just through their existence, offers all of that to someone else. There is no dependence on the other person.

Develop yourself, and the value takes care of itself.

When Rohn said “If you focus on adding more value than anyone else, you’ll never have to worry about anything” I believe he was right. But where he was wrong was that he didn’t specify where that value you should go. Because to anyone who’s socially insecure, in need of money, or lonely and craving validation from sex; they’re always going to look outside themselves for the answer. But they won’t find it.

If you focus on adding more value to your own life, more than anyone else does to theirs, then you will end up becoming the kind of person who they want to socialize with, do business with and have relationships with.

Instead of focusing on building relationships outside ourselves, we concentrate on the one inside, and we make it as good as we possibly can. Because it’s that relationship, and the value within, that serves as the foundation from which we’ll build all others.

*And if you go about it this way, you’ll only be having it with needy women.

*This blog, for example, is a book’s worth of information for anyone looking to improve themselves or their dating life. I regularly receive messages and emails from readers telling me how it has affected them or where they disagree. In some way or another, it engages people and adds value to their lives.

But this blog isn’t the result of me trying to add value or get anything out of them like a sale. In fact, at the time of writing this, I don’t sell anything. Although toying with the idea, I’ve never settled on something I’d want to sell, so have kept writing free content instead. Rather than being motivated by a desire to make money, this blog is a by-product of a shitload of reading, an obsession with self-improvement, issues with women that took years to manage, and a healthy dose of always wanting more. In other words, this blog adds value to people as a result of me adding value to myself.

Liked this article? Help me make an impact and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

IT WAS A sobering moment when I befriended guys who ‘got laid all the time.’ I had formed an idea of who I wanted to be in my mind, an idea that was based around how I wished to behave, the results I wanted to get, and the way people would react to me. This idea, to my mind, would prevent me from feeling what I felt at the time; loneliness, sadness, and shame.

Based on what I felt was lacking within me, this idea took root in the real world as a ‘player’. A guy who got all the girls, and was capable of getting the validation I emotionally needed at the time. For a long time, it was my ultimate fantasy.

Eventually, it came to be something that I outgrew. And a lot of (read: all) the things I learned along the way ended up on this blog and in my Complete Dating Course.(Which is 8-hours of video lessons and exercise goodness, alright, alright back to the article).

The truth was that like any fantasy when it came to my idea of the ‘player’ – reality had its ugly way with it.

THE PLAYER

I was sat in a hostel in South East Asia, talking with a guy who had an exceptional ability with women. When we went out, he’d almost always bring one home. He’d talk to them in bars, the club, the street, everywhere. When I asked him about his life, he always had stories littered with women. In fact, it seemed his stories never ran out. He’d experienced everything.

But despite this, something always seemed off.

Halfway through his latest story, probably about some South American threesome, or that stripper he took home, I asked him if he’d ever had a long-term relationship. He said he had, then continued on with a story, probably about an air hostess. He was smiling and happy, but his body language screamed at me that he had avoided the question. So later I asked him again.

And I noticed a pattern.

When he talked about his Ex, it was stories about how she wasn’t over him, how whenever he went home she would jump at the chance to make herself available, how he felt sorry for her and sorry for the guy she was with. When he talked about his Ex, he made a point of illustrating how she knew she had lost out, because, clearly, he was such a great guy.

It was a pattern of details, of attention; where he always seemed to find a way to illustrate how desirable he was, and how hopeless women were without him. And it didn’t just pervade the stories of his ex, I came to realize it occurred in every story he told and everything he did.

It was one of those points in a conversation where the connection between you breaks, and you realize, despite the apparent similarities, that this is someone who is different to you on a fundamental level. He needed me to know his Ex regretted losing him. He needed girls to want to sleep with him and he needed me to know girls wanted to sleep with him. Because, at the base of it all, he wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to himself. He needed all these things.

He was consumed by his need for validation.

THE NEED FOR EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

Despite the attention he got, the lifestyle he had, and the confidence he walked around with – there was something oddly hollow about him, something pitiable. I saw in him everything external that I wanted, but at the same time, nothing that I wanted internally. He was a man at once propelled by his confidence and ability, whilst at the same time, stunted by his malformed emotional needs, which he constantly had to placate with validation. Inside, he was just as needy as I was when I had started. He was just as needy as a guy who couldn’t get laid.*

Befriending guys like this, I eventually became disillusioned with my fantasy. The reality wasn’t a life I wanted, and it was a life that seemed to trap a lot of men. No ‘player’ seemed to have made it out the other side. Far from being immune to the pains that had driven me to seek validation from women, these men had been consumed by it. But what’s worse is that whilst they got laid all the time, they never, ever got the kind of girl who was impressive in her own right (confident, self-assured, and with her shit together). Instead, they had just become really good at gaming emotionally needy women. Because they were so emotionally stunted, all they could attract were emotionally stunted women.*

Both of them, locked in some need for validation from one another.

Right before my eyes, the James Bond fantasy became unmasked like some Scooby Doo episode as the babyish, emotionally immature fantasy that it always was. It turned out to be a life I didn’t want; and more importantly, a weak man that I never wanted to become.

THE REALITY OF MOST ‘PLAYERS’

A lot of guys find it hard to move beyond this need for validation. Hell, I still do too, even though I actively try to avoid it. The truth though, is that this lifestyle, without exception, has appeared in my life as something entirely without merit. Aside from a basic ability to confront anxiety, this lifestyle is usually an indication of an innate inability to confront something about oneself.

This, of course, is not to say that being promiscuous is bad. It is only to say that your attachment to the idea, and any attachment to the idea you see in others – is almost always a bad sign. A sign that you or they are emotionally stuck, and going to stagnate.

When we let go of the hunger for validation, we invite into our lives a quality of emotional living that rewards us with enriched opportunities from life. If we truly value our development over our need for validation, then the outcome we invite is that we live lives that are in a constant state of growth. Instead of feeling we need to be someone, we organically become someone.

Instead of telling people stories to enhance our ego, we tell people stories that add something to their lives. Instead of learning how to attract a certain kind of woman, we naturally attract the kind of woman who is right for us.*

With the rise of online dating, the shallowness of relationships has never been higher. Any guy with decent photos and a lick of confidence can become a ‘player’. But in becoming this player, he inadvertently confines himself within a sphere of emotional growth. It’s never been easier to get validation, but it’s validation that we should be wary of. Because looking outside yourself for fulfillment, in itself, stops you as soon as you get it.

Instead of aspiring to become another fantasy, hold your emotional richness as a benchmark for your own achievement. Look to overcome your fear, enhance your happiness, expand your comfort zone and diversify your identity. Instead of becoming a fantasy that exists to get you validation from women, become a fantasy that exists to make your life more fulfilling.

Because when you do, the women will come, and instead of being limited by it, you’ll be all the better for it.

—

*I still see this same guy posting pathetic and ill-veiled updates on Facebook talking about how he’s newly single and ready to go wild. As if anyone cares and it isn’t blindingly obvious this is just to make his Ex jealous.

*If this is something you’re into, go for it. Personally, I’ve always found it unfulfilling, boring, and not much of a rewarding challenge.

*Unsurprisingly, the kind of woman who could lock us down.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

I SPENT MOSTof my youth chasing relationships that were destined to crash into a screaming shit-heap, only for me to brush myself off, sniff-out another disaster, and head careening straight for it.

Like anyone else in those situations, I blamed it on luck. I was never one of those who outwardly said “I’m unlucky in love”, but inwardly, I was one of those who said “I’m unlucky in love”, whilst nursing a pot-noodle and watching sobbing re-runs of Titanic.

Whether it was a short, medium or long-term relationships, there seemed to be something about me that was preventing me from having the kind of relationship I actually wanted. Y’know, the fulfilling, exciting, supermodel one. Everything I ended up with was some measure of half-enthusiastic, halfheartedness, leaving me in a constant state of chasing someone who wasn’t really that into me.

It was a drag.

Our relationships in life say a lot about who we are as people. In his masterpiece, Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote “all happy families resemble one another. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I believe this is the same for a successful relationship, only in reverse. There is an essential element to relationships, that, depending on how we approach it, is either our best friend or our worst enemy. And it is our approach to this element that determines not only the initial success of the relationship but also the continued success of the relationship.

That element is rejection. And how we approach it determines everything.

THE MODEL OF ATTRACTION

When we attempt to meet new people in order to pursue a short or long term relationship, we will typically find ones we are physically attracted to and seek to win their attraction, approval, and interest.

This model of relationship building is the auto-pilot default of human mating, and it’s off shoots lie in the realms of flattery, coercion, fakery, supplication, approval seeking, disingenuousness, and pandering.

This model is engaged with, not just with the outcome of a relationship in mind, but more so because of the awareness of the obstacle that is present in the pursuit of that relationship: that is, the potential rejection.

Everything done in the attempt to win the approval of the one we’re attracted to is a direct effort to counteract and avoid this rejection. But this rarely results in the outcome we want.

I’ve written in other articles explaining how this behavior is unattractive in itself. So by approaching a woman we’re attracted to in this manner actively makes them less attracted to us. We’re making deliberate strides to shoot ourselves in the foot. But more importantly, the results we receive from this kind of pursuit are either empty-handedness or worse, we’re left with someone who we have convinced to be somewhat interested in who we have wanted them to perceive us as. Instead of leaving us with someone who likes us, avoiding rejection either leaves us rejected for being unattractive, or with someone who likes someone we aren’t.

THE COUNTERINTUITIVE APPROACH

The opposite to this approach is simple.

We aim to get rejected.

A running theme in my articles is this: “find the cause of the shitty results in your life and do the opposite.” Tired of working hours on something and getting nowhere? Spend a day doing nothing at all and watch the creative spark detonate. Bored of your life and its unfulfilling routine? Replace your external environment piece by piece, and watch that life change before your eyes.

In dating my advice is no different. When avoidance of rejection leaves you alone or in unsatisfying, broken relationships; the answer is to start inviting rejection into your life.

When I met my ex-girlfriend for the first time, I was overwhelmed with an awareness of my own behavior and the risks that my behavior posed to the potential relationship (read: sex) that loomed over the horizon. However, far from being introspective, I was instead hyper-aware of her and simply reacted accordingly. Unbeknownst to her, she was the hand on my marionette. The elements of my personality that were incompatible with her I simply kept hidden. Unsurprisingly, the result was two people, who although they liked each other, always struggled to make their relationship work.*

It turned out that in looking to not get rejected, I had rejected the possibility of a great relationship from my life. Leaving only a broken one.

We avoid rejection because we don’t like what it says about us. It says we aren’t good enough, it says we aren’t worthy; and we avoid it because worst of all, it feels like it’s validating what we already know; that we’re unlovable and destined to be alone. When our self-esteem is vulnerable, we avoid blows from rejection as if they were physical wounds. But as a result of this avoidance of rejection, we simultaneously avoid the very thing that will develop and strengthen our self-esteem; being accepted for who we really are.

When we avoid rejection by altering how we behave, what we tolerate and what we want to do, we actively reject ourselves from ever being accepted for any of those things. In other words, we stop ourselves from ever being liked for just being ourselves.

If someone rejects you for who you are, this is someone who you would never have a fulfilling relationship with. If someone accepts you for who you are, this is someone you would have a fulfilling relationship with by doing virtually nothing. This is, incidentally, why the majority of my pickup advice is: develop yourself, make a move.

DEEP REJECTION

If we actively avoid rejection out of a desire to be loved, it can be reasoned that we believe we are unworthy of love as we are, and therefore we aren’t just avoiding rejection from them; but we are actually doing far worse:

We are rejecting ourselves.

When we accept a relationship with someone who has a middling response to us, we are accepting that as the life we want and we are accepting that as the relationship we deserve. The truth of rejection is that we are rejecting ourselves before anyone else ever has the chance to.

This mismanagement of priorities comes from an inability to understand what makes us happy. When we believe a relationship will make us happy, we will actively pursue any relationship. When we feel we need validation in order to be happy, we will seek people’s approval at any cost.

The longer we remain trapped in a web of toxic motivation and needy behavior, the longer we will avoid rejection and shut ourselves off from rewarding relationships. The onus then is on ourselves to take responsibility for our approach to relationships and rejection.

LETTING GO

The simplest way to start getting the quality of relationships you truly want in your life, whether that be short term flings or long, fulfilling intimacy, is to start letting go of the desire to not be rejected.

Accept that it’s there, acknowledge it, then do the opposite. The more you develop an awareness of the ways in which you are avoiding rejection, and adjust your behavior accordingly, the more you open yourself up to meeting great people. Letting go of your avoidance of rejection isn’t about not feeling a desire to avoid it, it’s about recognizing that desire when it occurs, and in the many ways it occurs, and acting in spite of it.

This might be anything from not approaching her, to not speaking your mind, to not being as physical as you feel like you want to. Anything.

In a question, this process would ask: “Am I rejecting myself right now?”

Let’s say you want to get laid in a nightclub. The most likely person to sleep with you is a sexually active, attracted girl, who is comfortable with her sexuality. By actively being upfront and direct about your intentions and sexuality, you screen out girls who aren’t into you or comfortable with their sexuality, and you actually invite a girl into your life who views sexuality the same way you do. By getting rejected more, you have more sex. Go figure.

At the opposite end of the scale, in long term relationships, you are far more likely to meet someone who genuinely likes you for who you are if you are accepting rejection from people who don’t like you for you are. Instead of trying to ‘get back in touch’ with the ex who doesn’t want you, or trying to win over the girl who isn’t that interested, you accept the rejection and move on to people who are actually interested, genuinely invested, and much more capable of falling in love with you.

When you let go of your need to avoid rejection, you free yourself to start seizing opportunities; the more you get rejected for who you actually are, the faster you’ll find yourself surrounded by people who are interested and invested in who you are.

A LIFESTYLE OF REJECTION

The more we invest in who we feel need to be in order to be loveable, the more we invest in rejecting ourselves. Rejection doesn’t just lie within our behaviors around others, but in the very way we live our lives.

If we feel that we need to earn money in order to be worthy of love; we will devote all our efforts to pursuing that in the hope that we’ll get our needs met, all whilst simultaneously ignoring any germ of true personality that lies within us. If we feel we need to be funny and charming in order to be liked, we will smooth over moments of natural tension in interactions and destroy any spark that could have taken life.

When we fail to develop our lives and develop the richness of diversity and opportunity that exists within its potential; we reject ourselves from meeting a broad variety of people that would match us.

If we pay attention to finding the gold within us – maybe our desire to get into politics, or our desire to blog and travel, or our love of Japanese Anime, rugby, wrestling, classic literature, black and white cinema, hardcore clubbing or break dancing – we naturally give ourselves a compass which we can follow to find those who suit us best.

GENUINE DECISIONS FOR GENUINE RESULTS

Taking responsibility for our relationships means taking responsibility for the emotional reality in which our decisions with the opposite sex are made. In order to have the kind of relationships, sex life, and connection that we desire, we have to confront our own motivations and our approach to our identity.

Because if we’re acting from a place that rejects us before anyone has had the chance to, then those relationships will never come into being. Not only is this unsatisfying but it leaves us in a state of self-reinforcing emotional limbo. Every time we invest in someone who isn’t really into us, we invest in that part of ourselves that tells us we aren’t enough.

The problem with a results orientated mindset is that it prevents us from seeing what actually gives us the results we want. In relationships, this is enormous. Good relationships don’t start with a relationship, they start with someone who has a good relationship with themselves.

Before you look outwards, you have to look inwards, or you’ll never allow anyone to genuinely love you for who you are.

*Basically had a young, dumb relationship like anyone else.

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WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.